Wilful Behaviour (29 page)

Brunetti took the paper from the machine and handed it to Signorina Elettra. She read it through and, like him, looked up in surprise at the name of the notary. ‘Oh, my,’ she said in English, then switched to Italian and added, ‘What a coincidence.’

‘Of all things,’ said Brunetti. ‘The Filipetto family seems to be turning up everywhere.’

Even before he could suggest it, she volunteered, moving back to her desk, ‘Shall we have a look?’

No family could have been easier to trace through the archives of the various offices and institutions of the city. Gianpaolo, whom Brunetti had come to think of as
his
Filipetto, was the only son of a notary, and had himself produced only one son, who had died of cancer. One of his daughters had married into the Sanpaolo family, another famous family of notaries, and it was their son, Massimo, who had taken over the Filipetto studio upon the death of his uncle. Massimo was married, already the father of two sons, whom Brunetti had no doubt were already, at six and seven, being schooled in the arcana of notary lore, raised to become transmitters of the family wealth and position. The younger daughter had married a
foreigner
, but not until she was well into her forties, so there were no children.

The studio of Notaio Sanpaolo was on a small
calle
near the Teatro Goldoni. Brunetti preferred to show up unannounced, which he did about twenty minutes later. He gave his name to one of the two secretaries in the outer office but was told that the Notary had just begun
un rogito
, the transfer of title of a house. Brunetti knew that there was likely to be a pause very shortly as buyer and seller exchanged the money paid for the house. The Notary would excuse himself, saying he was going to check on some technicality, and in his absence the buyers would hand over to the sellers the real price of the house, always about twice the declared, and therefore taxed, price. As payment was in cash and as hundreds of millions of lire had usually to be counted, a notary could always depend on a long break before going back to witness the signing of the papers. More importantly, because he was the officer of the state who served as legal witness to this proceeding, his absence from his office during the counting allowed him honestly to say that he had seen no exchange of cash.

As Brunetti had anticipated, Sanpaolo came out of his office about ten minutes later, recognized Brunetti, pretended that he did not, and went over to talk to one of the secretaries. She pointed him back towards Brunetti, saying that this gentleman wanted to speak to him.

Sanpaolo was a tall man with a broad frame, heavily bearded and in need of a haircut. He had
probably
been very handsome in his youth, but good living had thickened his features and his body and so he looked more like an athlete run to fat than he did a notary. Brunetti thought that the younger man would probably be a bad liar: men with children often were, though Brunetti didn’t know why this was so. Perhaps giving hostages to fortune made men nervous.

‘Yes?’ he asked as he came toward Brunetti, his hands at his sides, making no attempt at civility.

‘I’ve come about the will of Signora Hedwig Jacobs,’ Brunetti said, keeping his voice level and not bothering to identify himself.

‘What about it?’ Sanpaolo asked, not asking Brunetti to repeat the name.

‘I’d like to know how it came into your possession.’

‘My possession?’ Sanpaolo demanded with singular lack of grace.

‘How it is that you came to prepare it for her and submit it for probate,’ Brunetti clarified.

‘Signora Jacobs was a client of mine, and I prepared the will for her and witnessed her signature and the signatures of the two witnesses.’

‘And who are they?’

‘What right do you have to ask these questions?’ Sanpaolo’s nervousness was turning into anger and he began to bluster. This was more than enough to push Brunetti to new heights of calm dispassion.

‘I’m investigating a murder, and Signora Jacobs’s will is of importance in that investigation.’

‘How can that be?’

‘I’m not at liberty to tell you that, sir, but I assure you that I have every right to inquire about her will.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Sanpaolo said and wheeled away, heading back to the counter. He said something to one of the women and went through a door that stood to the left of the one to his office. The woman opened a large black address book, checked a number, and then dialled the phone. She listened for a moment, said a few words, pushed a button on the phone, then set it back in the receiver. At no time in any of this did either secretary glance in Brunetti’s direction. Very casually, looking as bored and impatient as he could, Brunetti glanced at his watch and made a note of the time: it would make it that much easier when he asked Signorina Elettra to check Sanpaolo’s outgoing phone calls.

A few minutes later the door to Sanpaolo’s office opened slowly and a man stuck his head out, saying that the Notary could come back into his office now. The secretary who had made the call said the Notary had just received a call from South America and would be with him in a minute. The man went back into the office and closed the door.

Minutes passed, then a few more. The man in the office opened the door again and asked what was going on; the secretary asked if she could bring them something to drink. Saying nothing to her offer, the man went back into the office and closed the door, this time loudly.

Finally, after more than ten minutes, Sanpaolo
came
out of the second office, looking less tall than when he went inside. The secretary said something, but he waved at her with the back of his hand, as at a bothersome insect.

He approached Brunetti. ‘I went to her home on the day the will was signed. I took the will and my two secretaries with me, and they witnessed her signature.’ He spoke loud enough for the women to hear him, and both of them, looking first at Sanpaolo and then at Brunetti, nodded.

‘And how was it that you were asked to go to her home?’ Brunetti asked.

‘She called and asked me,’ Sanpaolo said, his face flushing as he answered.

‘Had you worked for Signora Jacobs before?’ Brunetti asked, and at that moment the door to Sanpaolo’s office opened again, and this time a different man put his head out.

‘Well?’ he demanded of Sanpaolo.

‘Two minutes, Carlo,’ Sanpaolo said with a broad smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

This time the door slammed.

Sanpaolo turned back to Brunetti, who calmly repeated the question, quite as if there had been no interruption, ‘Had you worked for Signora Jacobs before?’

The answer was a long time in coming. Brunetti watched the Notary consider the possibility of falsifying notes or entries in an appointment book, then abandon the idea. ‘No.’

‘Then how was it that she selected you of all of the notaries in the city, Dottor Sanpaolo?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Could it have been that someone recommended you?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Your grandfather?’

Sanpaolo’s eyes closed. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Perhaps or yes, Dottore?’ Brunetti demanded.

‘Yes.’

Brunetti fought down the contempt he felt for Sanpaolo for so easily having given in. Nothing, he realized, could be more perverse than to wish for better opponents. This was not a game, some sort of male competition for territory, but an attempt to find out who had driven that knife into Claudia Leonardo’s chest and left her to bleed to death.

‘You said you took the will with you.’

Sanpaolo nodded.

‘Whose words are used in it?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ he said and Brunetti believed him, suspected the man was so terrified of the consequence of his original evasions that he could no longer accurately process what he heard.

‘Who gave you the words to use in the will?’

Again, he watched Sanpaolo chase through the maze of consequences, should he lie. The Notary slid a sideways glance at the two women, both of them now conspicuously busy at their computers, and Brunetti watched him weigh how much he could trust them to cover him should he lie and what they’d have to do in order to do so. And Brunetti watched him abandon the idea.

‘My grandfather.’

‘How?’

‘He called me the day before and told me when she’d be expecting me, and then he dictated it to Cinzia on the phone, and she prepared a copy. That’s what I took when I went to see her.’

‘Did you know anything about this before your grandfather called you?’

‘No.’

‘Did she sign it of her free will?’ Brunetti asked.

Sanpaolo was indignant that his original behaviour could have suggested to Brunetti that he would violate the rules of his profession. ‘Of course,’ he insisted. He turned and indicated the two women, both of them still busy with heads bowed over their computers. ‘You can ask them.’

Brunetti did, surprising them both and surprising Sanpaolo, perhaps because his word had never been so obviously called into question. ‘Is that true, ladies?’ Brunetti called across the room.

They looked up from their keyboards, one of them pretending to be shocked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Brunetti turned his attention back to Sanpaolo. ‘Did your grandfather give you any explanation of this?’

Sanpaolo shook his head. ‘No, he just called and dictated the will and told me to take it to her the next day, have it witnessed, and enter it in my register.’

‘No explanation at all?’

Again Sanpaolo shook his head.

‘Didn’t you ask for one?’

This time Sanpaolo couldn’t disguise his surprise. ‘No one questions my grandfather,’ he said, as though this were catechism class and he called upon to recite one of the Commandments. The childlike simplicity of his next words turned any remaining contempt Brunetti might have had for him into pity. ‘We’re not allowed to question Nonno.’

Brunetti left him then and started back to the Questura, leaving it to his feet to navigate for him as he mused on Filipetto’s guile and legendary rapacity. He would hardly risk having his grandson name himself as heir in a will he prepared, but why the Biblioteca della Patria? As he approached San Marco, he found his thoughts flailing about for the point where the lines converged. Too many of the lines crossed: Claudia and Signora Jacobs; Filipetto and Signora Jacobs; the politics that Claudia loathed and her grandfather loved. And then there was the line that was hacked off with a knife.

Standing in front of the guards at the offices of the Justice of Peace, Brunetti pulled out his
telefonino
and dialled Signorina Elettra’s direct number. When she answered, he said, ‘I’m interested in anything you can find about Filipetto, professional or personal, and about La Biblioteca della Patria.’

‘Officially?’

‘Yes, but also what people say.’

‘When will you be here, sir?’

‘Twenty minutes at the most.’

‘I’ll make some calls now, sir,’ she said and broke the connection.

He didn’t hasten his steps but strolled along the
bacino
, taking the opportunity offered by a day cast in silver to look across to San Giorgio, then turned completely around and looked at the cupolas of the churches that lined the water on the other side of the canal. The Madonna had once saved the city from plague, and now there was a church. The Americans had saved the country from the Germans, and now there was McDonald’s.

When he got to the Questura, Brunetti went directly to her office. ‘Any luck?’ he asked when he went in.

‘Yes. I called around a little.’ He was curious to discover what this might mean.

‘And?’

‘A couple of years ago, his younger daughter married a foreigner who was working here in the city,’ she said, holding up a page from her notepad. ‘She has a considerable fortune from her mother, and she used it to create a job for him, a very well-paid job. He’s much younger than she and is said not to allow his marriage vows to interfere with his personal life. In fact, someone told me that they were asked to leave a restaurant a few months ago.’

Though he wasn’t particularly interested in any of this, Brunetti still asked, ‘Why?’

‘The person who told me about it said that the Filipetto woman didn’t like the way her husband was looking at a girl at the next table. Apparently she became quite abusive.’

‘To her husband?’ Brunetti asked, surprised that
Eleonora
Filipetto would be capable of any emotion at all.

‘No, to the girl.’

‘What happened?’

‘The owners had to ask them to leave.’

‘But what about Filipetto, and the Biblioteca?’ he asked, suddenly irritated at her very Venetian interest in gossip.

He heard her sigh. ‘It might be more useful if you pursued the last subject, sir,’ she said.

‘What subject?’

‘Her husband.’

Suddenly angry with games, he snapped, ‘I don’t care about gossip. I want to know about Filipetto.’

She made no attempt to disguise how much his response offended her. Instead of answering, she handed him the sheet of paper. ‘You might be interested in this, sir,’ she said with painful courtesy and turned to her computer.

He stepped forward, took the paper, but before he looked at it he said, ‘I’m sorry, Elettra. I shouldn’t speak to you like that.’

Her smile mingled relief and childlike eagerness. ‘Look at her name,’ she said, pointing to the paper.

He did. ‘
Gesú Bambino
,’ he exclaimed, though that was not the name written on the paper. ‘She married Maxwell Ford.’ He said it aloud and listened to the racket in his mind as various pieces began to slide, then fall, then thunder into place.

‘What was he doing when they got married?’

‘He was a stringer for one of the English papers.
The
Biblioteca was set up soon after they married.’

‘With the father’s approval?’

‘Dottor Filipetto is not known to be an approving sort of man, and this removed from his home the woman who had taken care of him since his wife died twenty-five years ago.’

‘But she’s still there.’

‘Only two afternoons a week, when the usual woman is out.’